


every tear a waterfall

by buckyjerkbarnes



Series: thanos shoulda took me instead (iw fics) [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Infinity War spoilers, Introspection, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers-centric, Steve gets to grieve for what has been (momentarily) lost, brief panic attack, especially for that ending, in the quiet between planning sessions, look mom! another sad!!, marvel can literally fight me in a target parking lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-04-30 04:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14489313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyjerkbarnes/pseuds/buckyjerkbarnes
Summary: It was nearly five miles to the perimeter where Bucky's hut resided. Size-wise, it was larger than their first apartment— that didn't say much, given the first place they'd owned in Brooklyn together was practically a matchbox— but there was a kitchenette, a small sitting room with two windows to allow the light in, a bathroom with a tub and toilet, and a bedroom. There were no bugs and cameras monitoring them, like the apartment he'd gotten through SHIELD right out the ice or even the flat he'd rented in Dupont Circle: they filled it with things of their choice, made it more than tightly packed dirt and reeds.They made it a home. First home they'd had in over seventy years.[Or, it's the night of Thanos snapping his fingers and Steve allows himself to shatter.]





	every tear a waterfall

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I've written about what happened directly after and what I hope will happen when they've got everyone back, so it seems only natural that I write about what happens in the in-between. Also, it's been pointed out to me that Bucky raises goats, not sheep, but I'm impartial to Curly and Billie Holiday the Sheep, so yeah no that's not changing. Other than this minor discrepancy, enjoy!

It was a long day, probably the most lengthy of Steve's life. He knows a thing or two about how time can go runny and endless just as well as he does that it can run faster than even his legs can carry him. Watching his mother slowly slip away in the quiet tuberculosis ward— that had somehow managed to slip in the middle. So had riding out the train's journey after capturing Zola, after half his soul was lost to the snow and ice of the Alps.

He was in a limbo, of sorts. Bucky had faded mere seconds ago, but he blinked and the sun has lowered its face from the sky and there were few lights on in the city. He hadn't noticed. 

They decided it would be best to regroup at the royal palace, riding the transports stiffly back to Shuri's massive lab. They'd found her curled in on herself on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees. When she saw them return without her brother, something behind her dark eyes was smothered. Her mother had been lost, too, and Okoye took one look at the princess and opened her arms, letting Shuri collapse into her side. In the coming days, if they could not reverse what had been done, she would become Queen of Wakanda.

Natasha hovered between him and Bruce, looking like she wished she could split herself in two to give them both her undivided attention. She was pale and a bit dirty from the fight and she hadn't stopped clutching at her stomach—he wondered if she was as nauseous as he was. 

In the silence of the lab, her swallow was practically as loud as a gun shot. "I...I have to call Clint," Natasha said, parting to do so. 

She moved far away enough that, even though they were all trying to strain their ears to listen, there was no hope in over-hearing. The results were clear when she returned, white-knuckling her phone and impossibly paler. Her jaw was infused with so much tension, he was shocked her teeth didn't splinter down to the nerve. 

"He'll be joining us by tomorrow morning," she said, muted, and bile coated the lining of his mouth: there was only one reason that Clint would come out of retirement and the thought that Laura and the kids were gone made a whole new pit open up in Steve's belly. He shifted his gaze when Bruce touched her arm, fingers finding her wrist, slipping down to wrap gently around her hand. She twitched, didn't quite seem to notice. Natasha had moved on from Bruce, had told Steve as much, but he knew what times of grief could do to people who had drifted apart. 

None of them asked how Clint would get to Wakanda. 

They spent little over an hour trying to develop a short-term plan: reach out to any other allies, try to find Tony and the rest of Rocket's team, see what advantages they had (if any) that could be utilized to reverse what was being referred to as the Snap. It was a short list, far shorter than Steve was comfortable with, but it was all they could bring to the table. It wasn't hard for conversation to muddle off and eventually stop all-together. Grief was a tangible thing, threatening to choke them all like mustard gas, to stun them— ever since he'd stepped off the field, Steve couldn't feel a thing below the neck. They needed to lean on one another just as badly as they needed to break apart in solitude and it was a hard combination to try to face. 

"I think," Thor murmured quietly, after a minute of heavy silence. "It would be wise if we all retired for the evening. It won't do anyone any good if we are all sleep-deprived." 

Shuri, who was every bit as regal and graceful as her brother, cleared her throat. Her tongue darted out to dampen her lips. "I can show you all to the guest quarters," she said and Steve pretended that he did not see her chin wobble, that he couldn't hear the soft shake in her voice. 

Thor gave her a small smile, picking up his new weapon from where he'd settled it on an vacant counter. "I would greatly appreciate that." He sidled up to her, nearly a foot taller and twice as wide in the shoulders, his smile softening, brows pulling slightly together. "I have never seen such advanced Midguardian technology. Would you tell me about it?" 

This made a little smile nudge up the corner of Shuri's mouth, though the absence of light behind her eyes did not change. "Should I start alphabetically or chronologically?" 

"You decide," Thor murmured, making a gesture with his hand for her to lead the way. Okoye was practically a second shadow in the princess's wake, knuckles tight around the shaft of her spear. She barely spared Thor a second glance, and he didn't seem to take offense, never quite loosing his perpetual sunny disposition even if there were more than a few clouds to clutter his brightness. Steve had always appreciated him for that. 

He followed the queue up until they were passing the main entrance and slowed his pace. Bruce was the first to notice, quickly followed by Nat, by Rhodey, and the rest. "Where you going, Cap?" 

Steve couldn't make a smile budge up the corners of his mouth. Didn't even attempt it. "I have a place." 

Natasha gave him a knowing look. He knew her well enough, now, to see she wanted to object and her words from the church in London, two and a thousand years ago  _I didn't want you to be alone_ echoed, for an instant, in his ears. She asked instead: "Do you want to take the quinjet?" 

"No," Steve said, shaking his head. "No, I'm alright walking." 

Shuri seemed to also have an idea of where Steve planned to go and her expression reflected as much, too. It could be the low light, but he thought there were tears in her eyes. "He had a set of kimoyo beads," she said quietly. "I will use them to contact you in the morning." 

He nodded, turned in step without another word.

It was nearly five miles to the perimeter where Bucky's hut resided. Size-wise, it was larger than their first apartment— that didn't say much, given the first place they'd owned in Brooklyn together was practically a matchbox— but there was a kitchenette, a small sitting room with two windows to allow the light in, a bathroom with a tub and toilet, and a bedroom. There were no bugs and cameras monitoring them, like the apartment he'd gotten through SHIELD right out the ice or even the flat he'd rented in Dupont Circle: they filled it with things of their choice, made it more than tightly packed dirt and reeds. 

They made it a home. First home they'd had in over seventy years.

He almost wilted in relief at the sight of their small slice of paradise unharmed. There wasn't the slightest sign that the Outriders had reached this corner of Wakanda and, when he got close enough, he had no trouble seeing Curly sleeping beneath one of many trees in vicinity and Billie Holiday chewing away at a mouthful of grass. Bucky loved those fucking sheep like they were his kids, had even talked about raising a foal, maybe some chickens, next. Steve teased him relentlessly, told he how Winnie Barnes would have never believed her eyes if she saw Bucky, saw the both of them, on a bonafide  _farm_. Bucky'd hated family trips to Indiana, where it was nothing but endless grain and cornfields. How many times had Bucky returned from those trips and taken Steve on long walks through Brooklyn, eyes on the sky and the buildings that reached for the clouds, said  _this city's in my blood and I genuinely think Ma is trying to make me break into hives by continually taking us to...the cut._

He would always shudder afterwards, melodramatic, because he knew it got a grin out of Steve.

It's an automatic thing, filling Curly and Billie Holiday's water trough. This was enough to stir Curly, who leapt up and ambled over for a long drink. When she was done, she pushed her face into Steve's hip, bleeting a low greeting and tipping her head back to give him a doleful look. 

Bucky always called  _good morning, ladies_ out their window when Steve made breakfast, chuckling at the answering  _baaah_ 's that chimed soon after. 

"Hey," he whispered, letting his hand shape to the top of Curly's skull. "Hey, girl." 

Billie Holiday watched them from a dozen yards away, still chewing away and showing no signs of stopping. The little crunches she made caught Curly's attention and she made a last noise Steve's way before bounding off to bump her head into her sister's. 

Steve turned, his feet moving him away from their antics, back from the edge of the lake that serenely lapped at the shore, and towards the door to the hut. He stopped when he was close enough to touch the doorway, hand flattening and holding the dirt frame. If he stepped inside, it would automatically alter however Buck had left it before the battle and Steve was so scared to move anything, to touch and taint, terrified that if anymore changes were made to the universe, the big ones might not get reversed. That sharp, bitter taste of bile rose to coat the lining of his mouth again, heavy like ash and Steve— Steve was—

He couldn't breathe. 

He couldn't goddamn  _breathe._

His uniform was choking him and it drove him forward through the cloth barrier and just a few feet into their home. Steve's fingers were practically boneless for how effective they were at fumbling open the buckles and straps, letting it collapse into a dark heap on the floor. His esophagus was still seizing even without the uniform pressing at his neck, his lungs threatening to revolt for the first time since he stumbled out of the Vita Ray machine. The feeling of an asthma attack was one he hadn't completely forgotten, but it had fell away to the recesses of his mind and he had no trouble matching up the constricting of his throat and the way his breathing came quicker, more labored, and how his lungs were working against and for him all at once with his memories. His body had been his first battlefield and it seemed the white flag had been lowered for the first time in recent years. 

Steve never should have left Wakanda. He should have clung to Bucky like glue, like a bad habit, like any other fucking metaphor for things that didn't stray, that didn't  _leave_. How much time had he wasted, always leaving? Was the destruction of a few Hydra cells worth one less meal with Bucky? One less afternoon nap curled close to one another? One less precious conversation? One less kiss, the tender brush of his fingers over Bucky's jaw, and Bucky looking back at him like Steve had personally put every single star in the sky just for him? 

He didn't, couldn't, even dignify that with an response. 

"Oh, god. Oh... oh, _god."_

So this is what was meant by the praise Atlas shrugged. Steve felt like he was settled three paces off-center, his head held under water with the vice at his shoulders keeping him in place. This was But his mind kept racing, kept digging a deeper trench for him to wallow in—

Every night that Steve was away, no matter how exhausted he might be, he called Bucky. He talked to him for at least a few minutes, sometimes as much as several hours. He couldn't get so sleep otherwise, not without hearing Bucky's voice so close, so warm in his ears. Sam would smirk after the call, if not yell something in the background during like  _tell that asshole I'm trying to sleep_ and Bucky would snort, say  _I know it's only seven at night in your time zone so tell bird brain to cool it._ Steve would cover the speaker, smirk, say  _he says hi._  Natasha, typically sipping some sort of tea or smoothie would huff, throw  _I bet that's_ exactly  _what he said_ into the pot and for a few minutes, he was at ease and he felt things might just work out alright. There was no cosmic phone he could use to hear Bucky's voice in his ear, couldn't even have Sam's snarky comments pitched into the air, either and—

He had never been to the hut without Bucky. Not even if Bucky was outside and he was in: he followed Bucky everywhere, helped out with any chores that needed to be done, even helped him carry buckets of water to a couple of the local families who had children that found Steve and Bucky interesting specimen, liked to listen to their voices and touch their hair. The hut's a modest space, but it seems massive without another person. Ever since Bucky had been restored to himself, not quite the person Steve knew before the war though not the contained man who had launched himself off a balcony in Bucharest to avoid a swat team, he was so noisy. Not obnoxiously so, though. He hummed when he cooked and he sang quietly, sometimes, always old songs, though he'd surprised Steve with a track off a Beyoncé album following a day spent with Shuri. Bucky would scuff his feet and adjust the material of the sling covering what remained of his left arm and seemed to delight in the  _chop-chop-chop_  that came with dicing vegetables for dinner. 

Automatic movement: cross to the sink, turn on the tap, scrub at his face, his hands and forearms, until clean. Do not use Bucky's soap. Pat himself dry with a towel thrown over the shower rod. He couldn't look at himself, went to the dresser across from their bed to pull out a fresh pair of boxers, cargo shorts, a white tank that Billie Holiday had chewed a hole in when she was nothing more than a wobbling lamb. He did not look at the small basket of clothing that needed to be cleaned waiting by the door, two bowls and two cups set out on the counter, a fruit dish filled with ripened plums. Atop the dresser, there was a photo Shuri had taken of the two of them, Steve's arm slung around Bucky's middle, Buck curled into Steve. While there might have been a sky saturated with violet and orange behind them, it paled in comparison to Bucky's beaming, beautiful grin. God he was so beautiful and there was a chance that Steve might never—

He collapsed on the side of their bed, elbows braced on his knees as he clutched his face in his hands.  

 _Bucky. Sam. Wanda. T'Challa. Vision. Bucky. Sam. Wa_ — the names thundered through his head, pressing uncomfortably hot against the sides of his skull. They were trying to form a noose, they were trying to strangle Steve from the inside out. 

"I..." Steve gasped, arms wrapping snugly around his middle as if he held tight enough, he could keep from falling apart. He was past the point of making coherent sounds. The whirlwind of his mind was enough to inhibit his speech and the lack of feeling in the rest of his body had long-since ebbed away. Now he felt too much. The scratch of the sheets against his calves, the prickle of the wind softly nudging the hair at his brow. It was too hot and too cold and Steve didn't even realize he was crying, that gross, raw animal sounds were heaving from of his chest like someone had reached in through his ribs to draw them out. He was shaking and he was shattering and it was too much and not enough and he—he just—

(How many people had he silently drifted by in the city? How many of them had let their sobs of grief fill the air? How many had been rushing around him, searching for their children, their siblings, their parents, terrified of what they might find— even more frightened by what they might not? He couldn't count them all. Not with all his fingers and toes.) 

He wasn't quite sure how long he spent doubled over, each breath sharp as a paper cut. It could have been a few seconds or it could have been days. Time went lax and unattainable around him. Steve didn't bother trying to grasp for it. 

A shadow fell across the dirt floor and he couldn't make his hands lift to swipe over his eyes, to try to rid his face of any evidence the tears might have left behind. 

Nat had not yet changed out of her uniform. She hadn't even wiped the dirt from her temple or her cheek. Though her eyes weren't red like Steve knows his are, he thought she might have been crying, just the same. 

She didn't say a word, simply came closer and knelt in front of him. Her arms slid around his shoulders, the sudden mass of super soldier pressing down on her upper body one she took on with the ease she did everything else.

In the silence between them, everything that had been bubbling and scratching at the surface of his mind burst forth:

"Wanda's just a kid," he whispered. Actually, she was twenty, nearly twenty-one, and despite the strength he knew she harnessed, a part of Steve would always see the young girl who lost her brother in the assault on Sokovia. "She... she and Vision... They deserved  _better_." He knew how much it bothered Wanda, how she hoarded each moment she could spend alone with Vision the way he did every instant he got at Bucky’s side.

"And Sam... Oh god. His mother. I need to call Darlene—"

"I tried," Nat told him, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He didn’t need to see her face to know that her expression was carefully tailored to keep her upset from rising to the surface. ”There was no answer. His sister's alright, though. So are her kids." 

“When’s the last time he’s seen them, huh? Any of them—”

“This is an old conversation, Steve. Sam’s a grown man. He knew what he signed up for.”

“Not the extent of it.”

He could sense she was very close to rolling her eyes. “None of us knew the extent of what Thanos would do. If we did, we would have played more on the side of caution.”

They had rolled out all stops, bringing as much firepower as they could to the fight— what more could they have done?

“This has been the first time in seventy years that Bucky had the chance to live without a war, that he didn’t have to fight and look where it got him,” Steve pressed, digging deeper, pouring salt into his already pulsing, bloody wounds. “I dragged him back into this.”

“No you didn’t.”

“I _did_ —”

“Now you’re just looking for things to blame yourself for.” He hadn’t even felt her right hand sneak up from his shoulder and land in his hair, but he couldn’t ignore the pointed tug she gave as though to say _stop being an idiot, Steve._ “Bar— _Bucky_ knew what he signed up for, too. Even if it hadn't been you who came, he would have fought. You know that. And...," she took a deep breath, steadied herself and planted her hands firmly on the roll of Steve's shoulder. "And even if he hadn't been on the field, he still would have faded." 

"You can't know that," he snapped, waspish as his control rapidly slipped further and further away. Steve felt like an animal foaming at the mouth, half-crazed with each overwhelming wave of exhaustion and agony and loss slamming down on his head.

“Bruce is pretty positive that location doesn't matter, that it was a random thing so long as half the universe's population was wiped away." 

 _It should have been me._   _It's always Bucky, always Bucky that the fates pull away._

"I have lost him  _so_ many times, Nat," he croaked, on the verge of strangled for all his heart was breaking. There was a black hole in his chest, collapsing, pressing against his ribs and his lungs and threatening to rip apart his insides while pushing, compressing them just under his skin. "I can't do it again. I  _can't_. I saw him fall from the train and he screamed my name, did you know that? And I didn't reach out in time to keep him from falling and that led to all the best parts of him getting hurt and twisted by Hydra for seventy god damn years. I just got him back and I—" Steve had to clap a hand over his mouth for fear he might vomit all over the packed dirt floor at his feet. 

Nat caught him again, her hold both miraculously gentler and tighter than the first time.

“I don’t know how we’re going to bounce back from this,” he choked against her crown. Her small hands smoothed up and down his back, a steady line of movement. “And that scares the shit out of me.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Natasha murmured. “We always do.”

“We’ve never faced something like this.”

“And we never faced anything like Ultron and we got through that.”

“This isn’t Ultron. This is… this is… the Rapture. There’s nothing closer to compare it to.” Except the Devil is a giant purple madman from a far off corner in space who has the power to obliterate anything and anyone that might try to go toe to toe with him. Would they have to live for seven years under the press of grief with the world collapsing around them little by little each passing day?

“You’re being dramatic, Steve.”

“And you’re being abnormally calm.” He was getting closer and closer to serving painful, verbal lashes. Steve curled a hand into a fist, sinking his nails into his palm to keep his upset at bay.

“I’ve already had my meltdown,” Natasha said, pulling back just enough to thumb away a tear or four off his cheeks. Her touch was gentle, light. “I had to do something on my walk over.”

It was a stunning admission by Natasha’s standards. It was like getting a bucket of ice water dumped over his head: she was in pain, too. She loved Sam as much as Steve did and he knew— he knew that she was protective of Wanda, that she looked out for her the way an older sister might. And she was worried for Tony, given he had not responded to any of their attempts to make contact and, while she hadn’t spoken much to Bucky, she’d shown on more than one occasion that she cared about his well-being and his ever-improving mental health. Not to mention that Clint was her partner, her platonic other half and he’d lost Laura and their three children. Natasha might be a world class spy and have the uncanny ability to pretend she was alright when everything was on the verge of collapse, but she _shouldn’t have to._

He curled closer to her, hands fumbling to grip her to him. “Oh… Oh, Nat, I’m—”

“Don’t,” she said, low and on the edge of a warning. The very first sign of pain underlying the single syllable. “Don’t do that.”

“I’ve been selfish and—”

“You are, as it so happens, the complete opposite of selfish, Steve. It’s literally one of your defining traits. Be honest—how long have you been holding all that in?” She did not mean the pain from earlier in the day.

 _March of forty-five_ , Steve thought, knee-jerk. Peggy was still alive and young and those brown eyes of hers had watched him with so much concern. She stayed with him for hours while he broke apart, her hand eventually crossing to his side of the table to cover his fingers with her own. He’d been so scared he was going to shatter the bones of her hand, but she just held on tighter, all silk and iron.

“A while,” he said instead.

She did not ask _define a while_ like he thought she might. “Thor was right. You should try to sleep. Tomorrow… will be rough.” New light always was— another set of twenty-four hours to pull the weight of yourself through. While the night might be lonely, the day illuminated everything that was there and all that wasn’t. Their grief would have had time to settle, to plant its roots: it would be worse than the day before.

“I won’t be able to.” He hadn’t slept for nearly two weeks when Bucky fell the first time. It quite literally took Mortia threatening to hit him over the head with his own shield for Steve to attempt curling up on his cot and lapsing into a fitful rest for about two hours before he woke, shuddering and clammy to the sound of Bucky’s screams in his ears.

"I can knock you out, if you want?" It was a half-hearted offer, one Steve believed she only put onto the table to get his mouth to twitch.

“Don’t worry about it.”

"I've never really learned how to process grief either, you know," she said quietly. "I saw you on the field, Steve. I saw you in the back of the van the day the Soldier's mask fell away and Bucky was underneath. You shut down. You stamp on all the pain and keep it bundled up inside until it explodes out of you. That’s not healthy.”

“Now you sound like Sam.”

She did roll her eyes, this time. They shone a dull, sea green in the low light. “Someone has to. There was a time when I would have rather shot myself in the foot than admit this, but talking helps. Talking to friends. I know you only keep me around for my wry banter, but you can tell me how you’re feeling on occasion.”

“You know you’re more than that to me,” Steve said, brow furrowing, willing Natasha to understand how valuable she was— is— always will be. “You were the first friend I made in the future. You didn’t talk down to me about things I might not understand. You trusted me. You helped me through the biggest blow to my sense of self I’ve ever suffered. You’ve never wavered, not once. I can’t just find someone like that at a corner store, Nat.”

He couldn’t tell if her eyes were shining out of gratitude or if he’d moved her near-tears. When she spoke, her voice was a little thicker than it had been half a minute previous: “You found Sam in a park. That’s close enough.”

The first smile, little more than the microscopic upward curl of his mouth, flickered to life on his face. “Bucky found me in a dirty alley. The three of you are the diamonds of people.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, you know.”

Steve ducked his head, slipped a hand over and around Nat’s. Even before the serum, her fingers would have been longer than his, smoother, too. “I’m working on it.”

She allowed, by the count of Steve’s heartbeat, two minutes to pass, doing nothing more than siting back on her haunches, trying to decipher each shift and shadow on his face. There was a note of the Widow in tone her when she brought the next step in the conversation to the table:

“When tomorrow comes, we will need a leader.”

His shoulders sank. He did not look at her. ”You’re more than capable. You, Rhodes, and Thor. Not to mention Okoye. Hell, I'm sure Thor's raccoon friend is in a better state than I am." 

"The raccoon was raiding any and all stores of Wakandian booze he could get his hands... paws on," she countered, brow lifting, as if she was still trying to process _that_. “I think his priorities lie elsewhere at the moment.”

"You've been made to fight since you were a child," he mumbled and he no longer felt as though his sinuses were trying to force their way out of his cheekbones or that his eyes were never going to stop stinging with white-hot tears. A warped, heavy sort of tranquility had seeped into him. ”I’ve been swinging my fists and jumping into battles I can't win for just as long. I'm  _tired_ , Nat. I'm so fucking tired." 

Her hand adjusted in his hold so it could tighten around his, so she could give his fingers an empathetic squeeze. "I know." 

“And I can’t be tired. Because… because the world needs Captain America to bring his A-game. They need him to step up and fight.”

Another clench of her fingers. “What about Steve Rogers? What does he need?”

He chuffed out a harsh laugh, grating in the quiet, where only the whisper of the water lapping against the sandy, grass-lined shore and the occasional distant squawk of exotic birds could be heard from the trees. “Since when has the world ever given a shit about Steve Rogers?”

“I do,” Nat murmured, no room for argument. “Barnes always has and so does Sam. Wanda would be very upset with me if I didn’t assure you that she’s never not had your number, too.”

“That’s manipulative.”

“It’s _true_.”

“It’s both, then.”

Her smile was less tight at the corners. “I’ll allow that.”

He stayed with Bucky for almost a month before the itch began just under his skin. Restlessness became a plague. He was so used to doing and acting and punching his way through life that, when faced with relative peace, Steve had no idea how to handle it. Bucky knew this, because Bucky had always been able to read him better than anyone else.

He had known from all the way back during their first war that Bucky had never really wanted to fight— that he’d stayed in the European theater just for Steve’s sake, as there had never been a time they didn’t follow each other. Until the present. If they weren’t being dragged away from one another, one of them was leaving, trying to save the other from the fallout. He wanted to stop. Steve never wanted to go again. It took the end of his fucking world for him to realize he wanted nothing more than to settle down on this piece of land with Bucky safe and whole and more than capable of cooing at his sheep-children. He wanted Bucky, wrapped up in blankets and smiling sleep-warm and tender to be the first thing he saw each morning.

Steve just wanted Bucky, in anyway he might have him. Who gave a damn about saving the world? They’d both more than fulfilled their quota for it.

"When...," he swallowed. "When this is all over, I want out. I want to retire." 

Somehow, Natasha didn't seem the least bit surprised that he would reach such a conclusion. She barely batted an eyelash when she prompted: "Who'll be Captain America?" 

"Not me," Steve said, sure and clear. "Sam, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, Sam. He's strong, level-headed. He's not got baggage like I do and I'm pretty sure his approval ratings are higher than mine have ever been." He could already see it, Sam in uniform, except it was a fusion of Captain America and Falcon with red, white and blue wings, too. The image almost made him smile. 

"You sound like you’ve already had this conversation with him.”

“I brought it up, once. I think he thought I was joking.”

“You weren’t.”

“No.”

“Well,” Nat said, giving his knee a squeeze. “If you want to go through with your plan, we’ll have to get them back. You’ll obviously settle down with Bucky, yes?”

He nodded, jerky bops of his head. “There’s no place else in the world I’d rather be.”

And she smiled. It came easier than each one that arrived before it. “I might have to get a little place of my own, here. Sam and I can stay down the mountain from you. We can do dinner on Sundays. I don’t need some cosmic stone to tell me it won’t be easy, but I’m willing to fight for it. Steve—,” she took both of his hands in hers, cradling, encouraging. “We’ll get them back." 

"We'll get them back," Steve echoed, trying to drink in her confidence. 

"And when we do," Natasha continued, strong as marble and just as ever-lasting. “You’ll get your peace. I’ll do my best to make it happen.”

He tipped in, bumping away a lock of her hair to press a kiss to her temple, a soft, fleeting thing. “Thank you, Nat.”

She hummed. “You’re not the only one that can inspire hope, Rogers.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @ fypoedameron and on twitter @ buckyjerkbarnes
> 
> I'm probably going to end up seeing the film again sometime this week and then I'm going for sure with a friends in like two weeks so yeah, yeah no Infinity War has not seen the last of me that's for damn sure lmao. Hope everyone is having a good day! Let me know what you think in the comments or if you just want to yell about the film, do it there!


End file.
